As a matter of fact, changing the case does have an effect, as you already seem to have discovered by now. If the relation does not have a ref-Tag, the map tries to be clever and makes a reference up by using the capitalized letters. However, this is only done as a last resort. As John said, using the ref-Tag is much better. The map also shows osmc:symbol-Tags ( http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:osmc:symbol ), but I'm not sure that this system is very useful outside Europe.

One way to solve the orientation problem is to simply rotate the camera: landscape pictures for what's ahead, portrait-size for infos about the way you just came from and a rotation of +/- 45° for what is on the right/left of the road. Pretty low-tech, but sufficient most of the time.